Documentary

Local Heroes

Local Heroes is an award-winning science and history television programme in the United Kingdom, presented by Adam Hart-Davis.

Made by Screenhouse Productions and directed by Paul Bader, it was first aired on the ITV regional network Yorkshire Television in 1991. In the show, Adam Hart-Davis, dressed in the pink and yellow cycling clothes that would became the show's trademark, rode around the YTV region on a matching pink and yellow bicycle, stopping in a particular area to tell the stories of scientists that lived or were born there. These stories were embellished by experiments, performed on the street by Hart-Davis, generally using bits of wood and junk from a trailer on his bike.

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Created By

Status

Ended

Original Name

Local Heroes

First Air Date

January 2, 1996

Last Air Date

June 27, 2000

Seasons

5

Episodes

42

Language

—

Production Companies

Networks

S05E06

East Midlands

In the last instalment of the series, viewers get the chance to show off their ideas for hovercraft, ice lenses, scientific musical instruments and bar-snack separators - all responses to the challenges inspired by the scientific heroes examined by Adam Hart-Davis in the last six weeks. Hart-Davis also heads for the East Midlands, where he turns his bicycle into a spinning machine to demonstrate the invention of Richard Arkwright, whose own version replaced 96 skilled workers with just one operator. George Green, a miller from Nottingham, produced a brilliant and revolutionary mathematical tool that is still used to solve problems in maths and physics today. What was his inspiration? The final hero of the series is Isaac Newton. In his house at Woolsthorpe in Lincolnshire, Hart-Davis wonders if the great man might have invented the cat flap.

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